Heartbeat
by soaring-smiles
Summary: "Nothing is forever," he says to her. "But if you are absolutely fixated, we can try." [TenRose]


**Got a bit tired of perfect!happy!endings complete with babies and rainbows. I don't think forever would exactly be a fairytale if it happened. They'd be happy, maybe, but there are ****_so many issues _****they'd need to deal with. Plus I don't think I like the idea of them being ****_completely _****domestic. It's not really them, is it?**

**So this is my take on a realistic forever(as unlikely as that sounds) enjoy :)**

* * *

Sometimes she dreams. Strange, awful things that run riot in her head when she sleeps, turning her memories to ash in her mouth.

Sometimes, they aren't even her memories at all.

* * *

"Do you know why a raven is like a writing desk?" he asks her, a white haired man with a girl by his side. There is something young in his gaze, a sharp glint in his eyes.

"No," she replies. "I don't."

"Ah." He looks towards his pretty blue box. "I thought not. No one does, not even the asker. Susan, come along. And you, child, you should watch your step."

She watches him walk away, his back hunched and small strides ringing out on the soaked pavement. There is nothing but stone and rain around them, locked in a dreamworld.

"Why?" she asks when they are nearly too far away to hear, at the edge of her scene. He looks back at her and somehow his features _shift_, skin stretching over bone, mouth gaping wider and wider until he could swallow her whole. His eyes are black, made out of nothing.

"_Because_," he rasps in a voice that's old and terrible, reminding her of that endless day on top of a monster in a pit. "_You broke the rules."_

She wakes up. The air is biting, something whispering in her ear.

_youbroketherulesyoubrokether ulesyoubroketherules_

She shivers.

* * *

The console room is warm and cozy, lights glowing comfortingly, and his trainers sticking out from under the machinery. Rose places her hand on the wall to say hello to the TARDIS, and it burns her palm.

"Are you alright?" he asks. She hisses, jerking away. "Didn't do anything to annoy the old girl? You know how she gets."

"Yeah," she mutters.

His dirt-flecked face peers out at her, hair stuck at insane angles, his fingers coated in oil. "You look tired. Sleep badly? I have some medication for that you know. They invent some drug in the thirty fourth century, puts you straight off for however long you want to be asleep for...Rose?"

She stares at him. Cold is digging under her skin, spreading icy chills throughout her veins and settling in just behind her heart.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" she asks, and he looks at her a little sharply.

"No one knows," he says. "Been reading Lewis Carroll? Great man, bit mad, but all the best people are, really."

He looks as if she should say something.

_youbroketherules_, something treacherous says inside her head. It starts to ache, throbbing behind her eyes, gold spots dancing in her vision.

She blinks.

"I think I might make some tea." Slowly, she turns and the pain flees as quickly as it came. He grins, that lovely melting smile that always coaxes some reciprocation out of her.

"Four sugars, ta."

Her steps feel heavy.

* * *

There is a man in the kitchen, a curly haired older man who glares at her sternly when she enters, as if it were her who was a stranger in _his_ home.

"You must be Rose. I'm afraid you're running a tad late. Time travel, you know."

"Late for what?"

He ignores her. "I'm not entirely sure what we were thinking, letting you race around like that." He makes a face and backs away from the counter. "Sentiment, I would suppose." He sniffs. "How Romana would mock us."

Rose crosses her arms defensively. "You're the Doctor," she says flatly, staring at the frankly awful scarf wrapped around his neck.

"Yes. The definite article, you might say. Would you like a jellybaby?" His large hands offer a packet and Rose shakes her head.

"What's going on?" she asks.

"Why," he proclaims like it should be obvious, "you made a rather big mistake. Broke a rule, as it were."

"What rule?"

He stares over her shoulder wordlessly, a frown creasing his forehead. "You'll find out soon enough, my dear."

He starts to fade, the kettle showing behind his body. His mouth is the last to go, turned down in a grimace. Rose stares at the place where he used to be.

She can't get the water to boil.

* * *

There is a funny glowing edge around her vision, a shaking in her fingers. broke it broke it broke it, echoes her mind. Stumbling along the corridor, she finally reaches the console room.

"Doctor, I-"

She stops, cut off in the middle of her sentence by a pair of piercing blue eyes. "Rose," he says in that way only he could really manage.

She can't breathe.

"Now why'd you go do a stupid thing like that? Shoulda let me die, Rose. I'd had my time."

"I couldn't just sit there eating _chips_," she spits. "Not when-"

"I was saving you! And you came back and took the whole of the vortex into your tiny little head. You broke the rules, love. Thing like that has consequences." He raises a large calloused hand and skims her cheek.

"What sort?" she asks him, and he strokes his thumb across her mouth. It feels cold. It feels _dead_.

"Big ones," he replies kindly.

For a moment she is so dizzy she thinks she might faint. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" she asks him shakily, not knowing why the question rises to her tongue so easily.

He shakes his head. "Dead men don't answer riddles, Rose. And I _am_ dead. You should know that by now."

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I didn't mean to."

"I know. But you still did."

His skin turns blue, his fingers stiff and freezing. The ice around her heart cracks and turns to heat, scorching her, melting her skin.

The Doctor falls away from her, turning into ashes as he hits the floor. She is paralyzed, fire creeping up her body, wrapping tightly around her muscles. All she can see is gold light, bursting out from her fingertips, her chest, her mouth. It _hurts_.

The last thing she feels is a pair of wiry arms clasped around her waist and a voice, frantic, desperate, begging her to hold on.

"You're not the Doctor," she says, and collapses.

* * *

She dreams of things, awful, bloody things. A planet being consumed by flames, a boy dying, over and over people leaving and crying and running. Species die and are risen and die again, destroyed in one fell swoop.

He is there as well, standing amongst the carnage, blood splattered across his face, all across his clothes and arms. "Do you see what I am, Rose?" he asks her, and raises his hand to encase hers in a tight, wet grip. "Will you come with me now?"

"No," she tries to say, but he's kissing her and he tastes like smoke.

The scene slips away, replaced by a man scratched all over with strange black symbols, red eyes and an open mouth. "The valiant child," he repeats over and over. "I am the Prince and the Fallen. I am the Enemy, I am the Sin and the fear and darkness."

He rocks himself back and forth, hunched over and shaking. "You broke the rules," he growls, and she screams when he splits apart to reveal something huge and red with harsh eyes and horns, claws reaching for her throat.

Suddenly it is gone as well, and she is against a wall, chained and staring at a iron cage with a thing inside. It raises its head. "You have something of the wolf about you," it muses, and its bones start cracking. She feels her face elongate, stretch and twist.

She has just started to tug at the cuffs when she is facing a pretty woman clothed in ragged Victorian evening wear. Curly hair is piled on top of her head, and her eyes are glinting with anger.

"You took my heart out," she accuses. They are in the middle of a huge junkyard, full of pieces of metal she doesn't recognize. "You tore my heart out and took it into yourself."

It takes her a moment to realize who this is. "I'm sorry," she says. "But he was dying. You've been with him all that time, you should understand. I couldn't let him go."

"Yes," the TARDIS-woman snaps. "You couldn't have. Selfish human. You're just a child. You couldn't understand. No one can withstand the Vortex."

Rose's anger flares up. "I love him," she growls. "Okay? I _love_ him."

The woman flicks her fingers. "You think you are the only one? He has fallen in love before you and will do afterwards. And that's not to speak of the countless people who have fallen in love with him."

"I'm-" Rose stops herself, the word _different_ hanging on her tongue, realizing how stupid that sounds. "He said he wouldn't do that to me," she finishes weakly. "Leave me."

The TARDIS' face softens. "Words don't mean that much with him. He lies so often..." She frowns. "Or is that the next one? I can never keep it straight in my head you know."

"What's happening?" Rose asks her. "What's happening to me?"

The woman's face is ice again. "You broke the rules. You can't play the game like that," she says. "It's time to pay the consequences. You want him so badly? Here, have your immortality. You will wish you weren't, by the end."

"How-"

There is a blinding, anguishing pain.

* * *

She wakes up and the Doctor's arms are around her, holding her securely against his chest as she shudders, stroking her hair. "I've got you, I've got you," he murmurs into the crown of her head. "It's fine, you're safe, I'm here."

Her breath comes in harsh gasps, heart racing and racing. "I saw," she begins, but he shushes her gently.

"I know, I know. It was all a dream, Rose, I promise."

But he isn't looking at her, just squeezing her so tightly it's hard to move. His face is drawn, stubble on his jaw dark, and his clothes are wrinkled. She's in the med bay, on one of the uncomfortable beds. There is a large armchair by its side, and a thick book on top of it.

"How long was I out?"

His response takes a while. "A week," he admits finally. "You kept having seizures, screaming about," His throat jumps as he swallows, "wolves and devils and breaking the rules. And asking how a raven was like a writing desk. I went to find the answer but I couldn't."

She laughs slightly, relaxing into his hold. He presses his lips to her forehead. "I thought for a moment, when you fell, that you weren't going to make it." His voice catches, and he clears his throat.

"I'm fine now, though, right?" Fingers press into her arm.

"Of course," comes his wavering voice. "Of course."

_He so often lies,_ the TARDIS hums into her ear, and she pretends not to listen.

* * *

Days or maybe weeks pass peacefully. He keeps a careful eye on her, testing her blood pressure every day, never failing once. She says he's becoming overprotective, and he just stares at the results before sending a vague smile her way.

There's an ancient star in a galaxy a million light years away from hers, and he takes her there to see it die. It's spectacular, but the whole time she is looking at him and wondering if this was the colour of the fire that burnt his planet.

He killed them, didn't he? All of them. He smiles at her and pulls her to press against his side, but he _killed_ them.

_Would he kill her too?_

No, no stupid thought. He's the Doctor, her best friend, the one she's in love with, he'd never hurt her.

_But he did, didn't he? Left her on that spaceship to die while he prowled after that queen-in-everything-but-name. A distraction, that was everything Rose was to him. A pretty bit of fluff._

He was coming back.

_He wasn't._

The star shines, and Rose goes back inside.

* * *

Her period is late.

She goes to touch up her roots before looking in the mirror and realizing they don't need it. Leaning her forehand on the cold glass, she takes deep even breaths.

He finds her there an hour later, curled on the side of the bed, staring at nothing in particular. His hands are cool and soft on her face as he cups her cheek.

"Rose?" he whispers, "Rose, look at me."

She does, staring right into those deep kind eyes, the lovely, lively gleam in them hushed, now. "What's going on?" she asks. "What are you lying about?"

"I'm not-"

_"What the fuck is happening to me?"_ she screams, and he stumbles back from her when she starts crying. "P-please, there are voices in my head and I don't-I don't know what's-" She hiccups, gathering herself together. "I don't f-feel like me, anymore," she says, burying her head in her hands.

"That's because you aren't," he says lowly, coming to sit beside her gingerly. "You're not that Rose Tyler anymore, not that shopgirl. But..." He takes a deep breath. "That's not the only thing. I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner, but I wasn't sure, and I had tests to run and-"

"What?" she snaps.

"You saved me," he starts, "I told you what you did. Opening the heart of the TARDIS, looking into it. But Rose, you can't do that. It's...it's against the rules. Impossible. An abomination."

He stops and runs a hand through his hair, the cords in his neck standing out. "It...changed you. I...it'd be one thing to be born from the Vortex. Your body could handle that; just a small amount of it. But you weren't just taking it in, Rose, you were the Vortex. You were time _itself_, a monstrous goddess, and it changed you. Irrevocably."

"How?" Her voice is small, and she sits up, hugging her knees to her chest.

He sighs. "I'm sorry. It froze you. It had to, or you'd be dead in a second. It didn't matter that it was only a couple of minutes. But while your body was still ageing, the Vortex would have sped it up. You would have been a pile of ash on the floor in micro-seconds."

"But my heart..." she raises a hand to her chest and feels it beating under her ribcage. "And I'm breathing."

"Your body's instinct, to keep pumping, to keep going. But Rose, have you ever really thought about it? Breathing, your heart beating? Ever really tried to _stop_ it?"

"N-no." His intense eyes are scaring her. "I can't. It's my heart, I can't just stop it-"

But she can. The moment she's really trying to think about it, she feels the muscle and then relaxes it, like it's her bicep. Everything stills, and she opens her mouth, head spinning and whirling, tears starting at the edge of her vision.

"You're running on Vortex energy now. Soaked in it. Could keep you going for millennia. Your body's natural instinct to keep producing blood but...yours is different. Almost unnecessary. You don't need it, it doesn't actually help you, but you keep on making it."

She gasps, taking in a shaky breath and her heart starts pumping again. Her eyes slide shut. "Oh my god," she hears herself whisper. "Oh my _god_."

"Rose." He grabs her arms. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you, I just wanted to...I need you to understand. I was furious with you. Me and the TARDIS both. Not only was it an invasion of privacy, but you could have destroyed reality, torn matter apart if you wanted to."

"And the dreams I was having? I saw you, younger yous. In the kitchen and in my dreams..."

"You were becoming more open to memories. Some must have seeped through, twisted your perception. The TARDIS was trying to tell you what was happening through it, I think. But she was a little rough. I tried to calm her down, but she's still..."

"When I fainted," she says flatly, "I saw you covered with blood, standing over everything you'd ever killed. Then I saw the devil, then I saw the werewolf and then the TARDIS tried to speak to me."

He opens and shuts his mouth with a click. "I'm sorry. So sorry. But there's an imbalance in your head. Time trying to...fuck you up, for a lack of a better phrase. Taking your fears and hates, warping them. I can teach you to control that, or at least mute it. There was this potential from the moment you took in the Vortex, but you were completely normal until something kicked it into gear. An intense fear, terror of something to make your survival instinct start up. Only, in your case, it was a little more than that."

_the valiant child who will die in battle so very soon_

_what's down there?_

"After your collapse, which marked the start of its influence, you were, you are, completely open to all your past terrors and childhood nightmares. Hence the bad dreams, the voices..."

Rose shakes her head, completely overwhelmed. Suddenly, it jumps out at her. "I'm not human," she says. "I'm not...human."

"Well. You have all the necessary parts and such, but...no. Not like me either. I have no idea what you are."

That hits her in the stomach hard. No idea what she is. Like she's some sort of experiment, a thing he's picked up out of a casual interest. Some...what did he say? Abomination. She's that. An abomination.

He must have realised what he's said, because he's reaching out to her, mouth twisted down. She flinches away.

"Just get out." She means for it to come out angry and strong, but it's bitter and weak and defeated. "Please."

"Rose-"

"Please."

He leaves quietly, sending her one last apologetic look before the door shuts. She turns her face into her pillow, and waits for her tears to start.

It's a while before she wonders whether she might not have that ability any more, and has never been so relieved to cry.

* * *

She's never thought of herself as a motherly person. She's had no desire to have kids early or anything like that. But now she realises she took that for granted, without ever knowing.

Somewhere, in the back of her head, she'd imagined a boy or a girl, her boy or girl. And then, embarrassingly, their child. With wild brown hair and a mile-a-minute mouth. Not that that could have ever happened.

But she still dreamt.

It's one thing to control her heart. It's a muscle. But she can't just start up her reproductive system, or start ageing again. That's gone, locked away.

And she misses it. Used to bitch about it all the time, but now she feels kind of lost. Maybe that's no different from a really early menopause, but still. There's that reminder that she isn't human.

The Doctor comes about once a day, by her calculations. Places his fingers on her temples and helps her sort through the threads in her head. They're tangled and sometimes terrifying, bits of things she's repressed. Even all the way back to the Nestene Conciousness, all these nightmares, subtle fears, hallucinations she didn't know she had.

And afterwards, he tries. Brings her tea and food, talks to her about nonsense, recites ridiculous poetry to make her smile at him. And she knows she's being self-pitying. This is her chance, right? The big fairytale all come to life for Rose Tyler.

Handsome prince, everywhere and anywhere, a nice boxed happy-ever-after for her, tied off with a bow.

Except it doesn't feel like it. It feels like being stolen from. Like someone's taken everything important to her at once and left her with a dusty room and indents where the furniture used to be.

She'd always been a cheerful person, making the best of things. Got that trait from her mum. But now she's a bit foggy on exactly whether the term 'person' is appropriate. The Doctor doesn't really treat her any different from before, though.

Still.

Once, she cuts the top of her arm, just a bit. It bleeds for a while, no sign of any glowy gold thing healing it over. She stops her heart. The bleeding stops as well. She starts her heart.

The Doctor bursts in and yells at her, dragging her to his lab and bandaging the small wound carefully and then telling her loudly and forcefully that she's a stupid idiot of a girl and just because she isn't going to die of old age doesn't mean she can't die altogether. He shakes her, hugs her tightly and then stalks out of the room in a dizzying blur of emotions.

So that answers one of her questions.

* * *

"You do know, don't you? That even this isn't forever?" the TARDIS asks pleasantly.

"Nothing is forever," Rose replies, and trails her fingers over a piece of metal that looks like a console. "Not him, or you, or me."

A ramshackle building behind them glows an unearthly green. The TARDIS shudders. "Nasty thing," she says. "They were so wrong to come here. Not even for a box."

"Who?"

"The red girl and the pretty one, and him, of course. I never remember names." She pauses. "I know yours, though. I've tried to forget it, but you did swallow my heart."

"Will I know them, the people with him?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on you." The woman cocks her head. "It means the smell of dust after rain."

"What does?"

A slow smile creeps over her face. "You'll find out. Or she will. It really doesn't matter who."

She is five paces away before Rose has the courage to say, "It matters to him."

"It does, yes." The TARDIS turns to look at her speculatively. "But it might not. Be careful of ghosts. I do hate seeing him cry like that."

She wakes up with a gasp, and the TARDIS is humming, half comforting, half smugly. "I'm sorry for that," Rose whispers to the air. "I only wanted to save him."

The humming grows a little softer.

* * *

"She's not too mad at you anymore," the Doctor says one afternoon, in the middle of their tangled sessions. They are knee deep in her absolute terror over the werewolf, one of the harder ones. "The TARDIS. Even a little sympathetic. Apologising for the...er..._unpleasantness_ earlier."

"Does that mean I'll get hot water again?" she asks, and jerks when some huge, blaring image rears up in her head.

_you are like me_, it says, but the Doctor brushes it down with a thought, and they shut the door on it, howling and struggling to tear her throat out.

Reinette had come earlier, twirling in and out with her fancy gown and real blonde hair, stealing him away and leaving her abandoned. He's been quiet ever since, frowning when he's not inside her mind. Now he just looks at her, and squeezes her hand softly.

"I wasn't going to leave you," he says quietly. "Not ever."

"I knew you weren't-"

"You didn't, though. I should have told you I'd find a way back." He smiles ruefully. "A goodbye, at least."

She flops back on the bed, mentally exhausted, the world dancing beneath her closed eyes. "S'alright. You had to save her, an' it isn't right of me to be complaining about that. We don't have to..._analyze_ it. It happened, alright, and I dealt with it."

Suddenly his face is a lot closer, his breath hot on her face. "Like you're dealing now, Rose?" he asks. "Did you do this? Bottle it all up inside until it just came streaming out? All this fear, this sadness and anxiety and you never said a word."

"I thought you wouldn't have wanted to hear it."

He collapses on the bed next to her, scrubbing his hands through his hair.

"I thought you were fine! All this time I thought you were _fine_. Why didn't you talk to me? You can tell me, Rose, anything. You're safe with me, alright?"

"I know I'm safe! I'm not some kid who needs coddling, I just...look. I'm not me anymore. I'm some kind of unnatural _thing_-"

He flips to face her, knocking the bed and forcing her eyes to open. He's staring at her intensely, one hand on her shoulder, a bit too hard to be comfortable.

"Don't ever say that. You're Rose. Rose Tyler, Stuff of Legend. You and me, yeah? Team TARDIS." He furrows his eyebrows until she nods and then he turns to face the ceiling again.

"Tell you what though," he muses. "You do a _great_ party trick."

She doesn't laugh.

* * *

"Why am I still here, if you've forgiven me?" It's freezing cold, and this place is creepy. Feels dead, somehow.

"I don't know. I thought you could use a little girl time." The TARDIS is sitting on a make-shift bench, staring at her hands like they contain the answers to every question ever asked.

"By way of hallucination?"

"Needs be." She shrugs, looking away from her ragged nails.

"Will I be able to shut you out? Once I finish blocking my mind?"

"Perhaps." She sends Rose a speculative look. "But will you want to?"

"Isn't this all inside my head?" Rose sighs. She'll never get this paradoxical stuff, it goes right over her head still. Nothing's made her a genius or a superhero or anything. She can stop her heart and breathing and that's the extent of it. She's just...frozen.

"Well, yes. But I _am_ telepathic and your telepathic capacities have increased substantially. Before, this would have crushed your tiny little brain like a bug."

"Er...right. Great. What exactly am I here for?"

The TARDIS heaves out a delicate sigh and slumps down. "He's miserable," she complains. "Absolutely miserable, all the time. No more affectionate, loving, adjusting of my circuits-"

"Yeah thanks, that's quite enough about that-"

"He just tries to think of ways to get you back to normal."

"What?" Rose jolts. "Can he do it?"

The TARDIS shakes her head. "This was what you wanted. You broke the rules, and now you have your consequence. But while you're unhappy, he's unhappy."

"I can't just snap back to how I used to be," Rose says, sitting next to the TARDIS. "It doesn't work like that. I'm not human...I'm not anything."

"He's the only one of his kind in the universe," the TARDIS points out. "He burnt his planet to ashes and here he is, trying to be better. To accept it."

"The Doctor isn't exactly a model of a healthy coping strategy, is he?"

She shoos the argument away. "At least he's trying. You just brood. I always thought you were good for him. He was far too lost in his grief but you were there and you made him laugh and show off and you made him feel. But now he's so bogged down in you he can't see anything else."

"I'm leaving now," Rose says, standing and turning. "Any last minute enigmatic warnings for me?"

She hesitates. "Y. I don't like the letter Y. Yvonne. Yana. Of course the first one won't matter if you don't slip. The second, though...only if she turns left..."

"Thanks. You are so cryptic."

* * *

He's sitting by her bed when she jerks and gasps upright. His hand is on her cheek. "Are you alright?" he asks, and she notices the deeper lines around his eyes.

"Fine. Yeah. I...yeah." She lies back down on her side, curled up and watching him read. His glasses are slipping down his nose. They make her want to slide them all the way off.

"Would you let me stay, if all I did was...brood?" she asks him, and he looks up distractedly.

"You can stay here for however long you want," he replies.

"What about what you want?"

There's a line that's always been drawn in their friendship. No kissing, no touching. No sex. And now she can't figure out if that line has been totally erased or not. Whether he wants her just because she can stay with him for his life, or whether he's always wanted her.

"I," he says, "want you to be with me. For a very, _very_ long time."

"Forever?" she asks. He smiles sadly at her, leaning foward to brush her hair off her face. The touch makes her blush.

"Nothing is forever," he says to her. "But if you are absolutely fixated, we can try."

He looks like he's going to kiss her then, but she turns her head and he draws back. She hears the creak of the wood as he lowers himself back into the chair.

Somehow, it sounds sad.

* * *

It's the last. It's the very last thing plaguing her mind and she is _so_, so afraid. He knows it, presses their foreheads together.

"We'll be fine," he says. "We will be absolutely fine."

And then he is inside her head, and seeping through a crack in a door is darkness. It forms into a huge hulking monster, with teeth that narrow to a wickedly sharp point, and grinning soulless eyes. "I am the Prince and the Fallen," it rasps. "I am the Enemy, I am the Sin and the fear and darkness."

Rose flinches but stands strong, staring down the devil in her head. She remembers the feel of the gun in her hands, the way Toby screamed and thrashed. The Doctor's fingers are warm on her her temples, and he breathes against her mouth, sharing the same air.

"Come on Rose," he murmurs. "You're fine, you're fine, you can do it."

The monster looms over her, starts to move closer to her. It feels like it can see into her soul. No, like it can rip her soul out if it wants.

"The valiant child, who will die in battle so very soon," it coos in an unnaturally deep voice. The Doctor tenses.

"It's lying, Rose," he says firmly. "That's what it does, it _lies_."

She wants to say that she knows. That the last sentence doesn't scare her, that he's comforting himself and not her. The thing is so close to her now, rotten and stinking of hatred.

"Go to hell," Rose says, and sends the devil back where it came from with a burst of willpower so strong it exhausts her.

She collapses on her bedspread and he's on top of her, both of them boneless and spent. He's shaking.

"It lied," he says one more time and buries his face in her hair. "It _lied_."

In some sort of strange twist, it's her who ends up comforting him that time, and she falls asleep with his weight on her, long and lean and fitting together seamlessly.

* * *

It's the Northern Lights beaming above them, her first time properly outside since Krop Tor. She's quiet, staring up at the night sky and the ribbon of shimmering colours. He's watching it too, but with his hands jammed in his pockets.

"Are you going to stop this now?" he asks her, finally.

"Stop what?" she replies, even though she knows perfectly well.

"Being miserable."

Rose shrugs deeper into her jacket. "I don't know. Pretty big thing, losing your humanity."

He sighs frustratedly. "You're only seeing the bad in this. There's good too, and you can't just ignore it."

She gapes at him. "You're _happy_ this happened?"

"No! No...yes. Look, I'm not happy you're unhappy. But I've been so alone, and then there was you. And you were beautiful and young and smart but I knew one day I was going to turn around and you would have wrinkles and glasses or a limp and I wouldn't be able to do anything. But now I don't have to."

She jerks back from him. "That is so selfish," she hisses. "See the good? What _good_ was there in losing Gallifrey?"

He kicks the ice and snow, angry lines twisted into his face. "For god's sake Rose, I met _you_!"

The silence is thick and stunned until she swallows and shakes her head. "I don't-"

"I can't rewrite what you did anymore than I can save Gallifrey. The universe dealt you a hand, and this is it. You have a long, _long_ time to grieve for what you lost, but right now you have the universe and you have _me_. So don't you dare for one second give up on us."

He's standing there, desperate and angry with absolutely ridiculous hair and someone else's scarf, so she does what anyone would do in these circumstances.

She kisses him. And as he kisses her back, wrapping his arms around her and nearly crushing her, he groans, "You made me wait so long for this."

But then his mouth is open on hers, hot and eager, and she can't talk for a very long time, not when he's finally, finally doing this.

Her heart goes so fast it makes her dizzy, but she keeps it beating anyway.

* * *

"I was stupid," she admits to the TARDIS. "Okay?"

"Humans," she sniffs. "So caught up in themselves. Look at him now, he's practically glowing."

Rose stares around the junkyard. "Did you beat it? That thing in the house."

"The thing _was_ the house," the TARDIS says flatly. "And yes. This time."

"Was I there?" Rose holds her breath. The TARDIS just shakes her head.

"I don't know. You might be or you might not. Have you stayed away from ghosts?"

"Haven't met any," Rose replies. "But I'll keep a look out. Oh, And by the way. Why is a writing desk like a raven?"

The TARDIS smiles at her. "Oh, I haven't a clue. You just always seemed like Alice, falling down into a world she can barely comprehand. Not anymore should be getting back now. He's waking up, and you're comatose. And I have business with _my_ thief. Not yours."

"Nothing else to tell me?" Rose asks lightly. The TARDIS walks back to the horizon, where she could swear a tiny silhouette of a man is outlined.

"No," she says. She is nearly gone when something occurs to Rose.

"Was it ever really a consequence, or just a gift?"

The TARDIS turns and grins. "Now _that_ is entirely up to you."

* * *

Sometimes she dreams about wonderful, glittering things that dance around her mind when she sleeps, and turn her nightmares to ash.

Mostly, though, she's sprawled over him, warm and safe and happy, dreaming of nothing at all.


End file.
